Question
1. Marc Prensky's "Emerging online life of the digital native" and Dave Weinberger's "A New World" both present different views of contemporary internet users. In light of your own experiences with new technologies do you think they are accurate portrayals? Discuss why or why not with specific examples.
Total Words: 1007
An essay by Yuqian Wu
Essay
The main idea in the essay is about two auditors discuss the internet users in a different views. Marc Prensky’s “Energing online life of the digital native” is about how this is differently in technology using by native digital and immigrant digital, and how they do it. Actually, Prensky’s opinion is about how people using new technology in the new world. Dave Weinberger’s “A New World” introduces the Web that brings challenges to our culture. Dave Weinberger pointed many things like “instant messaging” type of technology to send messages to friends, such as Msn, Yahoo or Skype. Weinberger provided that new technology change people’s behavior and life. Both of them create an insight on their views of the internet and what it facilitates to the world in today’s modern society. But in my opinion, I prefer “ Emerging online life of the digital”
Marc Prensky said “Emerging online life of the digital native”, He thought that today’s young people, is having the plentiful online life, this is in the development of creating for their own. It is increase the distance between Natives and Immigrants. In “Digital Natives” makes their every activity to create a new online ways of making each activity, within the new technology available to them. However, it brings forward that the difference between the digital native and digital immigrant. Digital immigrants not use new technology much more, or just use it as basic ways. Oppositely, digital natives use technology to create new life ways. Many students are not just using technology differently as today, but used as their daily activities differently. Digital Natives may be as important for this, but this online life has become the bigger areas than just the Internet. For example, Facebook and Myspace. This online life are also an entire strategy for how to live, survive and thrive in the 21st century (refer to ‘The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native’ from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp) , although the cyberspace has created to take part of the everyday life. Nowadays, many young students have lots of email address accounts. The daily activities that all people do are included “Digital Immigrants” to observe and examine how the Digital Natives have taught themselves in different ways in doing those activities. Prensky commented that there was one thing that everyone observes that even Immigrants were using the exact same technology such as eBay, blogs for doing things differently.
The datas show that the peer-to-peer (P2P) activity keeps increasing and those P2P applications are the most downloaded on the internet. (Prensky 2004) From my own experience as a digital native, the tendency of share all forms of entertainment (movies, video games, music,etc.) is just as huge as Prensky has stated. Although companies such as Apple (http://www.apple.com/itunes/) and others are encouraging users to pay relatively small amounts of money for music (and they are making some progress), there are still countless programs and websites that allow for the sharing of all the previously mentioned forms of media for no cost. Some of these programs include baidu (http://www.baidu.com/ ), Songtaste (http://www.songtaste.com/music/), and bittorrent program Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/).
Marc Prensky established two parts, one is called “digital native”, the other one is “digital Immigrant” digital native is the people who born in the digital age, almost pointed the people who growing after 20 century. The positive way for now day’s people using technology is creating the new way to use it and also rich their daily life. However, the negative way be brought by Prensky is people loosing lots of abilities than “Immigrant”. When people chatting with each other on line they always using abbreviations, this will cause younger people don't know how to write correct words. The other thing is about young people really spending more time on playing games on line, or makes friends. Child may loose ability to communicate with the real people. Those will become large problems what new technology brings to us. Although digital native is fashion, convenient, easy, have more fun. We still need to pay attention to those issues. Otherwise, young people may just like stay at home, play with themselves. They may loose the ability of society life communicating and social responsibility.
In conclusion, both supporting and opposing arguments must be taken into consideration since the viewpoints of the internet can become quite complex, and are far from concrete or objective. Weinberger see’s the internet as a place that has its own time and “Time like that can spoil you for the real world” (Weinberger, 2002). He sees it come out of technology that “sent a jolt through our culture, zapping our economy, our ideas about the sharing of creative works, and possibly even institutions such as religion and government” (Weinberger, 2002). He took out experiences on ebay.com and took out of context and describes it as a “new world we're just beginning to inhabit” (Weinberger, 2002) and compares it to Europeans first landing in America. Prensky describe of the web is different but accurate similarly, he sees it as a new world, except with ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ being the internet savvy and the people who are new to it and trying to learn “Digital Natives are programmed to – and want to – keep up with it. For adults, some new Digital Native behaviors may be worth immediately imitating and adopting” (Prensky, 2004). He also explained clearly on experiences with online shopping, online meeting and online chatting, but he describes the internet as a place where “Today norms and behaviors are changing much faster than in the past, because the technology changes rapidly” (Prensky, 2004) and is “new, emerging, different form of life” (Prensky, 2004) that cannot be ignored. Both of them provided their own experience and support their opinions. But I prefer Prensky’s “digital native” I thought it is more comprehensive and correct. He compares the digital native with the digital immigrant, list out the different between this two. It suits for today’s new world. We create new technology, developing by using it, and also got problem when using it.
Refernce List
‘A PHENOMENOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SEMANTIC WEB AND USER-CENTERED TAGGING SYSTEMS’2006, D. Grant Campbel, University of Western Ontario, Canada, pp. 1 – 15. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from ProQuest Database.- ‘DIGITAL NA(T)IVES – DISCOURSES OF EXCLUSION IN AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY’2009, Dr. David K. Herold, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Applied Social Sciences (APSS), HK, pp. 1 – 7. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from ProQuest Database.
- ‘Digital nature and Digital nurture: libraries, learning and the digital native’ 2008, Michael Robinson, Library Management. Brad Ford 2008 29, pp. 67 – 76. Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ProQuest Database.
- ‘The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native’ 2004, pp. 1-5. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp.
- ‘The digital native – myth and reality’ 2009, Emerald, Neil Selwyn, Institute of Education, University of London, UK, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 364 – 379. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from ProQuest Database.
- ‘Prensky’s Digital Native Versus Digital Immigrants’ 2008, Jim Rich, pp. 1-13. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from ProQuest Database.
Marc Prensky, Writing, 2008, viewed 14 October 2009, <http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp>- Small pieces, Big Thoughts, by Andrew Hinton, August 12, 2002. Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design, viewed 14 October 2009, <http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/small_pieces_big_thoughts>
- Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger, 2002, Chapter 1 – A New World, viewed 14 October 2009, <http://www.smallpieces.com/content/chapter1.html>
- Web 2.0: Something Remarkable Going On, April 27, 2006. IP Democracy,viewed 14 October 2009, <http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/001470web_20_something_remarkable_going_on.php>
What Is Web 2.0 – O’Reilly Media, Tim O’Reilly. O’Reilly Network, 2005. viewed 19 October 2009, <http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html>
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